Notes from a very informal conversation. Questions are not listed because this was not an interview, but a free-form conversation initiated by Lynn and Kay. Their observations are summarized below in the order in which they presented them to us.

Hands-On Workshops to Train Staff on How to Make Online Webshops Interactive

If people have workshops that are already done, they should start thinking about how they could be made more interactive. I just got a posting from someone over at JMU and she said she already has something like 10 workshops which she'll give to anybody.

It seems reasonable to think about getting people together in a consortium and spend a day with folks who can train us. Maybe we need to hire someone to train us on how to do a very effective webshop. JMU and GMU would be perfect. That would be great. So we can do really great training tools. Everyone could bring their materials and say what do I do with this? How do I put this up? You have hand-outs, activities Power Point, notes and you need to be able to say how do I organize that and make it interactive for a teacher to get the most out of it.

We need all the fine details of it - the most effective elearning methods. Like 15 minute modules. We don't really know. We just know going out and making presentations in person.

Even the SD crowd. We just did a 20 minute video on that. It's a CD with audio that could be part of a webshop. That was really good.

Go to the VDOE website. At the top of the page look under Departments...Assessment and Reporting...VAPP. It takes you to 2003/2004CD With Audio - This file will take a few minutes to download. It's a Power Point with audio. We burned a bunch of CDs but I gave them away to Fairfax yesterday. If you have problems, we can download them here for you.

The AT folks are charged with populating the site now so they're getting up there. We're telling people we know to check it out. We understand there are server issues, etc. so we don't tell everybody. We don't want people to have a bad experience their first time at the site.

Good people in the field to contact:
Jennifer Mitchell
Kelly Leggon

Using SME to Create Webshops

We should consider compensating some of the people in the field to make the webshops. No reason we can't pay our own people to do webshops. That way everyone has access to it.

Fairfax is doing training after training after treaining. They have stacks of materials. They're putting it all online. All going back to a database online. There's no reasson they can't share this information. They have 29,000 special educators in Fairfax County. There's no reason they can't help us out and we can take advantage of it. People can do awareness training on line then come in with questions on site and go over the nitty gritty in person.

Think about some people who already know how to do webshops. You have to go through TTAC to get them. We have someone who does all our feeding consults. We could hire her to do that because we don't know anything about feeding. There are things when we don't kow the first thing about it. We don't have to do everything. When we get the consult request we would refer them first to the site.

You could extend the way you look at outside consultants, not only for onsites but also to do online training modules.

Could you find out how you compensate someone for creating online training? What's the reimbursement procedure? It's like mini trainings. You probably contract with them to have it up. I don't know what's typical for education. It's a professional property question.

Copyright Issues

One of the other TTAC groups got slammed on this. A lot of our research we get isn't ours. We put up things we find in other people's books. You need to know what we can and can't do regarding copyright issues. One of the TTAC groups got slammed at a workshop because they didn't give credit to someone who did the work they based their information on.

Once it goes up on the web, it's a whole new world.

We need to think out of the box. It can't be just TTAC personnel because there are a number of specialized areas where we don't have expertise. Some of the areas dealing with severe disabilities. It's not a huge request at this point because we're so focused on educational outcomes, but all those things affect educational outcomes

We have a lot of people we know. We always know who to go to for anything that comes along. There isn't an area that will go uncovered it just won't be our staff and I'm not sure it should be. We're talking about wanting things to be right. You can't take chances with that. There's a definite need to go outside not all the time and not that often

Wouldn't it be nice to have a real well known person in the field put a webshop up?

The PBS crowd wants George Sugai who is the most important researcher in country on kids in poverty and at risk in terms of changing the culture of schools. His research is in urban Chicago. They want to bring him to talk to superintendents to discuss school safety, school wide behavior and discipline problems because that affects test scores. In a safe environment kids are likely to learn more effectively.